


Fool's Gold

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Ambition, Charm, Child Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Manipulation, Mental Abuse, Physical Abuse, unhealthy relationship dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 17:11:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14898629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Not all the glitters is gold. Some is fool's gold, and the fool is Alex.





	Fool's Gold

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for implied rape/non-consensual sex, child abuse, and abuse of all kinds (mental, emotional, and physical). This is a dark story featuring many disturbing, unhealthy relationship dynamics. Please proceed with caution and the understanding that the author condones none of this behavior.

Fool’s Gold

Not all that glittered was gold, Alex’s father had taught him when they explored the mines dug deep into Tirragen’s rocky hills to capture the only riches its stony soil could offer its overlords. Some of it was fool’s gold that glimmered as bright but was worth less than a copper unless a fool could be convinced to accept it as gold. 

Duke Roger’s eyes gleamed with the reflected golden rays of the sun that shone brilliant enough to be binding to an amateur—which Alex Mithros duly be praised, wasn’t—off their swords as they tangled steel against steel in a palace courtyard. 

“Duke Gareth says you’re the best swordsman among the pages and squires.” Duke Roger’s gaze swept over Alex as if to cleave him in half from top to toe as he thrust his blade at Alex. 

“I try my best, Your Grace.” As he parried Duke Roger’s blow and surged into an attack of his own, Alex resolved not to be distracted by Duke Roger’s secondhand compliment even if it was heady praise to hear that Duke Gareth considered him the best swordsman among the pages and squires. Alex had long regarded himself as such—he didn’t think that was arrogance any more than his assurance that he could figure out any mathematical problem he encountered was—but Duke Gareth, whose praise was rarer and more precious than gold, had always been more critical than complimentary in their training sessions. Alex had been ordered a thousand times to hit harder or strike swifter, but he had never once been told that he was the best among his peers. Until Roger had said it, Alex hadn’t realized how it had been burning a hole in his heart not to have his talent acknowledged. 

“I admire a young man with ambition—with a blazing desire to be the best, Alexander of Tirragen.” Duke Roger’s teeth sparkled like pearls in candlelight as he lowered his sword so abruptly that Alex almost pressed his advantage before noticing that the duel was over and sliding his own weapon reluctantly into his scabbard. “Would you be my squire?” 

“I’d be honored, Your Grace.” Alex bowed low and graceful. He had been assigned a knightmaster when he became a squire but that wasn’t the same as being chosen especially by such a powerful personage as the Duke of Conte. He felt starstruck and didn’t know why one of the strongest mages in the world would take him as a squire when he didn’t even have the Gift needed to light a candle. All he knew was that he would spend the rest of his time as Duke Roger’s squire striving to prove worthy of the honor that had been bestowed upon him. “It would be my pleasure to serve as your squire.” 

Not all that glittered was gold but the yellow powder Duke Roger was having Alex pour into the black cauldron that bubbled with a mysterious potion smelling sweet as lavenders twinkled like stars in the dark storeroom. 

As the stars fell into the void of the midnight black cauldron, Alex dared to venture: “Your Grace, I’ll never be skilled in the art of powders and spells. I’m grateful to be your squire, but I confess I don’t understand why you didn’t choose someone with the Gift to benefit from your instruction in it.” 

It was mortifying enough for Alex to admit his ignorance and magical ineptitude without Duke Roger chuckling as he echoed Alex’s description of magic. “The art of powders and spells. Is that all you imagine the Gift is, young Alex?” 

“I wasn’t seeking to diminish the Gift, Your Grace.” Alex silently thanked the shadows in the storeroom for covering the flames that scorched his cheeks. “I was only wondering if I was worthy of your training.” 

“You’re worthy of what I decide you are, and your worthiness isn’t measured by your knowledge of powders and spells but rather by whether you obey me without questioning.” Duke Roger lifted the ladle with which he was stirring the potion to rap Alex’s knuckles sharply. The smack of wood against flesh rang off the stone walls, and a heartbeat later, pain lanced across Alex’s knuckles, the skin stinging like vinegar rubbed into an open wound to avert infection. It must have been the potion, not the smack, that was making him hiss his hurt. “Don’t ever question me, Alex. That’s the first and most important rule of being my squire.” 

“Yes, Your Grace.” Alex’s mind was spinning with a hundred questions about the potion—how long the pain would last and how damaging it could be—that he couldn’t ask without provoking further punishment. “My hand…” 

“It burns.” Duke Roger’s pleasant smile didn’t waver as he watched Alex flapped his hand as a bird might an injured wing. “The potion won’t leave any permanent marks, however, since I’ll never scar you, Alex. I’ll even be so generous as to give you a healing lotion if you manage to finish this potion without questioning me. Otherwise, I’m afraid that you’ll have to wait hours for the sting to disappear.” 

“I won’t ask any more questions.” Alex spoke in a rush, thinking that he would have pledged never to speak again if it would alleviate the sting in his hand that now felt as if it had been poisoned by a scorpion from the Bazhir desert.

“Good lad.” Duke Roger nodded as if Alex’s promise was the most delightful one he had ever heard, and Alex’s brain was hopelessly muddled by the mixed messages—the agony and the approval—that made it impossible to discern whether Duke Roger was a friend or foe. “The faster you work, the sooner you’ll have your healing lotion, and I hope I’ll never have to teach you so harsh a lesson again, but I will if I have to, understand?” 

“Yes, Your Grace,” Alex lied though clenched teeth, understanding nothing about the Duke of Conte and what he was doing to him. 

Not all that glittered was gold, and the firelight flickered ruby over Duke Roger’s sun-baked skin as Alex dutifully massaged green aloe ointment into the sunburns his knightmaster had gotten from exposing too much of his chest and shoulders on a ride with the king and queen through the Royal Forest. 

“I thought the forest might provide some shade.” Duke Roger shook his head in mild self-chastisement. “After my time in Carthak, I ought to have known better. Wouldn’t you agree, Alex?” 

Alex—unsure of whether assent or argument would be more tactful under the circumstances—compromised by commenting, “I couldn’t say, Your Grace. I’ve never been to Carthak.” 

“A pity.” Duke Roger trailed a languid finger over the olive skin that had always been a shame to Alex and his family. “Your skin would be handsome—not merely exotic as it is here—in Carthak, and, unlike me, you wouldn’t burn if you danced too close to the sun.” 

“I’m a Tirragen.” Alex’s grin gleamed like the sun held hostage behind mackerel gray clouds. “We’re born not to burn when we dance too close to the sun. It makes us an ambitious family.” 

Not all that glittered was gold, and possession shone sharp as steel in Duke Roger’s eyes the night Alex returned late from dinner of laughter and jokes with Jon, Gary, and Raoul. 

“Are you my squire or my cousin’s?” Duke Roger seized Alex’s elbow and shook Alex until he forgot everything—how it felt to laugh, to joke, and to have friends—except how jealous his knightmaster could be. 

“Yours, Your Grace.” Alex’s words emerged in an almost whisper, and his gaze sank toward the lushly carpeted floor—a softness that belied his knightmaster’s ferocity. 

“Look at me.” Duke Roger yanked Alex’s chin up until Alex’s eyes were riveted not on the duke’s but on a gemstone necklace his knightmaster wore about his throat. “A man cannot serve two masters as they say in Carthak. He will love the one and hate the other. I’m the master you must love and serve all your days, Alexander of Tirragen. I’m the purpose your ambition craves.” 

Duke Roger agitated the necklace with the fingers that weren’t locking Alex’s jaw in place. The gem’s luster flashed like summer lightning across Alex’s vision, leaving a blinding afterglow that made his head feel as if it were being ripped apart from within by a mythical monster. 

“You’re my master.” Alex’s head ached but had the clarity to know that the duke would be the light to guide him through any darkness. The vow burst from him without thought but with all the meaning that fashioned the universe and knitted it together across time and space, “I’ll love and serve you all my days.” 

Not all that glittered was gold, but the potion Duke Roger urged him to drink—fragrant with honey and all that was warm and tempting— after his Ordeal seemed to sparkle with all the light in the world. When Alex sipped it, the tension in his spine eased, and his eyelids became heavy as boulders. At first when Duke Roger coaxed him out of the gossamer-thin, sweat-drenched white garments in which he had endured his Ordeal, he imagined he was being gently prepared for sleep.

Instead he found himself, too stunned to scream, swallowed in a storm of kisses. He was too numb from the Ordeal and the potion to feel anything the duke did to his body, and he blamed his bleeding and his stiffness when Duke Roger awakened him for his knighthood ceremony on his Ordeal. That was all the truth he could bear after the horrors that had been inflicted upon him.

After he was knighted with three ritual blows from the king—two on his shoulders and one on his crown—the radiant and immaculate in flamboyant orange robes Duke Roger presented him with a sword from Raven Armory that gleamed with all the potential of gold but not all that glittered was gold. Some was fool’s gold, and the fool was Alex.


End file.
